


Freefall

by SmutPrince



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Gen, Pre-Canon, Tags May Change, give pawpaw some damn lore, might write more undecided
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-24
Updated: 2021-02-24
Packaged: 2021-03-15 03:29:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 649
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29677734
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SmutPrince/pseuds/SmutPrince
Summary: He can feel the base of his skull pulse, and it feels like it’s full to bursting, a dam strained; the core of his mind feels like it's steadily expanding past the limits his skull can withstand and Siebren idly wonders if he’ll hear the bone crack and split before it kills him.--An excerpt on Sigma's accident, since Blizzard can't be assed. I may write more following this, but don't hold me to it.
Kudos: 7





	Freefall

Siebren feels like he’s underwater.

He feels weightless and weightlessness is something he’d grown accustomed to during his tenure at The International Space Station, but something about this is … different. It’s a sensation disparate from his stints outside of Earth’s grasp. Physically, he feels weightless but now… Now the weightlessness is in his mind, nearly indescribable, his only even remotely accurate comparison is that it’s almost how he felt after one too many at the Amsterdam science socials he used to frequent when he was a lot younger. And a lot less occupied with his work.

Siebren’s consciousness is floating, his memories thrown to-and-fro between instances, giving him the psychological equivalent of whiplash. One minute he's at a gala, sipping expensive wine with a colleague in the corner of a conference room, and while he chuckles, he can feel his face fall, blearily aware that _something is wrong;_ the next he's sitting at his desk, up to his neck in paperwork and books, and his cat Kepler is swiping lazily at his ankle in a half-hearted bid for attention. Then he's gasping like he's breaking water's surface, waking from a nightmare in his college dorm, then he's back, just barely, to the conference room, but it's barren, empty save for him, shivering. He can feel a claw that he can't see cut into his ankle, break his skin, and he hisses in pain. The wound doesn’t bleed.

Siebren feels like he’s flipping into each instance of himself, lurching into each memory in nauseating freefall; every time he lands lasts only a beat long but grows increasingly terrifying, like a panic attack in slow motion. He can feel the base of his skull pulse, and it feels like it’s full to bursting, a dam strained; the core of his mind feels like it's steadily expanding past the limits his skull can withstand and Siebren idly wonders if he’ll hear the bone crack and split before it kills him.

There’s a violent snap or the sound of one, and Siebren can feel what he’d assume would be his soul shudder then all at once he’s torn from his seemingly endless freefall, as though his momentum caught by an invisible harness. It all starts swelling in him again, as he is pulled back from his shattered self, and realigned. He can feel weight again, can feel secured back into a fixed point rather than scattered across his existence.

Then he resurfaces, mouth gasping violently as he seizes to sit up, eyes wide, and he can hear the faintest end of a song that he recognizes but can't quite name, that he’d only just realized had been playing gently across his memories the whole time. His head does not hurt, but it throbs.

When he's more grounded, Siebren registers that he's on the floor of the ISS, and he can just barely see a blip of … _something_ … out of the corner of his eye before it’s gone. He can't hear anything clearly, his ears feel like they're stuffed with cotton, or like he's underwater. Siebren feels like he's just stopped drowning, despite being over 238,000 miles away from any body of water larger than a five-gallon tank. He takes in deep, purposeful breaths.

Siebren feels a hand on his upper arm, and he jumps, the concretely tangible contact incredibly overwhelming after what felt like reliving his entire life over and over and turns to see nobody else in the containment chamber. He can see the frantic bodies through a window up above, in the observation room, talking, yelling, with panicked movements, and it’s his best guess that something catastrophic happened. The glass is cracked, spiderwebbed into an intricate spiral, but remains intact. Siebren feels his mind swim again, sinking into unconsciousness, and the last thought he can comprehend before he passes out is hitting the ground, but he can't remember leaving it.


End file.
